My Religion Part Two: Let There Be Infinite Alternate Universes

            I’m describing what I call my religion, and religions are usually about more than faith and a sense of awe, so I guess I’ll go in to some of my other beliefs that are commonly covered by religions.

First should probably be the origin of the universe. I support the Big Bang, but that is more of a description of how the universe started and not how it came into being. I use infinite parallel universes to explain the origin of everything. Most of the infinite universes are going to have a group of laws and conditions that can’t result in stability or even any physical existence at all (such as if there was an inverse cube law instead of our inverse square law, assume a three spatial dimension universe, obviously), but when you have an infinite number of tries to make a universe, a few of them are going to end up making sense. I also have room in this theory for of universes that exist in a stable way, but also have rules different from our own, which is fantastic. Imagine a universe just like ours, except the Pythagorean Theorem doesn’t work! Just try to think about that for a while without giving yourself an aneurism.

Stay classy geometry

For the end of the universe I have beliefs with a similar theme. I accept the scientific theory of a universal heat death as the progression of entropy reaches a conclusion, but with some extra bits of my own added on to make things interesting. The extra bits are the fact that I’m not certain than the Big Bang was a unique event. We could get another bang every few trillion years (give or take) due to some unknown spontaneous energy generation (I have faith that matter is energy). The whole idea of something happening once, and only once, makes me suspicious. Just because the Big Bang is the only such phenomenon that we know about doesn’t mean that it is the only one that can or will happen. This is an example of using skepticism to expand one’s worldview rather than contract it.

Next up should probably be the afterlife. I’m going to dip into my infinite alternate universe theory again and pull out something neat. I think it would be endlessly stupendous if every alternate version of a person collapsed into a semi-collective consciousness after death. Basically, you would because aware of every other life you could have lead depending on different choices or circumstances. You would get to know how your life would have progressed had you gathered the courage to ask your sweetie to prom, or had been born the son of an absolute monarch in the middle ages. Extended far enough this would end up giving you complete causal knowledge of the universe, since you would have witnessed everything and anything that is capable of happening (because technically everyone is an alternate version of you). You would get to become Laplace’s Demon upon death, which isn’t a paradox since you're no longer a causal agent. I like to maintain a sense of identity in this afterlife, because an exploration of all possible universes wouldn’t be as good without a solid origin.

You could meet your evil self!

Last, I’ll cover my source of morality. Earlier, I explained how I believed morals to be subjective depending on the social system in which they exist. A good act is one that benefits society, and evil the opposite. Assuming the society is one that benefits you and others anyway, or else the opposite is true (basically you can overthrow a cruel dictator and it would be good, baring the establishment of an even worse social system). This carries a bit of a utilitarian aspect to it, but I don’t get bogged down with trying to weigh alternatives against each other. I don’t think you can ever sum the pleasures and pains of yourself and everyone else and come up with a best action. For this reason I think that intension is more important to morals than consequences. One should just do one’s best to benefit themselves and those around them, while also trying to do as little harm as possible. In the end, all this boils down to is "try to be a jerk as little as possible". Things just go better that way. The golden rule is also a good thing to follow.

All in all, I think that does an okay (if extremely brief) job of answering some of the major questions typically covered by religions. I’m still not done with this self-adulating shenanigans, so next time I’ll talk about the aspects of religion that I don't have.

My Religion Part One: In the Beginning

            In the past I’ve been known to claim my religion is Norse. I was basically treating the whole idea of religion as a joke, which isn’t really all that useful. I’ve been doing some thinking and I’ve come up with some slightly more mature ideas on the subject. My new collection of beliefs have all of the aspects of religion that I view as positive, without some of the stuff I don’t think is so great. Let's talk about it.

            If I had to sum up my beliefs in one word it would be pantheism. Basically, I see God as being indistinguishable from the universe and its laws. God isn’t a great word since it implies an amount of anthropomorphization, so it would be more accurate to say that I feel the universe possesses a level of divinity. I’m awed by many aspects of the universe; the consistency and power of mathematics, the grace and opportune qualities of the physical laws, the beauty and efficiency of nature, and the seemingly endless breadth and depth of the universe. I wouldn’t say that I worship these things, because I don’t have any sort of rituals or observances, but my regard goes beyond a simple appreciation of science and nature. Close inspection or reflection on everything I perceive can cause simultaneous feelings of wonder, excitement, disbelief, and warmth. The ability of my mind to comprehend concepts from infinity to simple geometry (there is no such thing as a straight line in our physical reality, they exist only as an idea, which is fantastic), the way simple rules can be used to predict or achieve complex actions (like understanding the orbits of the planets, and then landing robots on those planets), the myriad of systems that work together in biological organisms (me for instance) to perform even simple operations (like closing my hand) or between organisms (like gut bacteria; I have an ecosystem inside me), and the fact that the universe simultaneously has no edge and has continued to produce ever smaller particles (wave-particles, or whatever they prefer to be called) as fast as we can find them (it’s turtles all the way down, but also all the way up) are just a few examples of things that fill me with amazement.

I love giant space cameras

My faith in the existence of these things (I’ve never seen an atom and haven’t personally dissected animals to see how their organs work) is very important to me. This faith isn’t just believing what scientists tell me. I also fully accept causality (that causes lead to effect), persistence (that the backs of objects are still there even if I can’t see them or that the laws of gravity will continue to function in the same way), and that my senses give me an accurate representation of the world. These may not seem like concepts that can be doubted to most people, but I’m not most people. I’m some sort of crappy pretend philosopher who writes rubbish on the internet. I’ve always had a strong skeptical streak (I once failed a true of false quiz about the Titanic, not because I didn’t know the answers, but because I was doubting our ability to site history as absolute fact), and I could easily fall into a solipsistic world view. My beliefs are an active choice, made because they make my universe more stupendous. They also have quite a bit of utility (it is hard to pursue pleasure if you don’t believe in the existence of your body).

This could be a fake picture and I would never know

This whole “religion” thing is based around my abnormal view of the world. I mean, I lost sleep the other night because I was so excited about a number series that I had thought up (numbers that are the least common multiple of sequential numbers: 1, 2, 6, 12, 60, 60, 420, 840…). Another good example is the fact that I write introspective essays and post them on the internet. Speaking of which, I think this is enough for one go, so, TO BE CONTINUED.

Time: The Finalest Frontier?

            Time travel, let’s talk about it. First off, to deal with causality crises and paradox problems, I’m going to assume infinite alternate universes, so as soon as you arrive in the past the universe divides at that point, therefore your actions are occurring in a new universe and can’t have effects on your personal past. With that out of the way we can focus on the physics and not the metaphysics. This post will cover three methods of time travel, their consequences, and some bonus conjectures from me. I should point out that this is specifically about traveling back in time, since traveling forward in time is possible with simple relativistic effects according to the current theories of physics, and is therefore isn't as fun to talk about.

            In fiction time travel is often shown as using some vehicle (DeLorean, Telephone Booth, Police Box, Steam Punk Contraption) where you punch in a date, watch some flashing lights, and then drop into your desired time period out of thin air. Sadly, I don’t think this is physically possible. In the generally accepted model of the universe, space and time are two aspects of the same thing (spacetime), and movement in this model is somewhat limited. To travel from one point to another, you need to travel through all the points in between. This means that to travel backward through time you should need to travel through all the corresponding spacetime, or more simply, your time machine needs to exist in all the space and time between your arrival and departure. Imagine building a machine, waiting a year, stepping into it and then stepping out the day after you finished building it. This may not sound very interesting, unless you’ve ever seen the movie Primer, which uses time travel this way and is great, if in a more cerebral way than less feasible time travel films. By the way, you may need to spend the same amount of time in the machine as is moved back in time, aka, traveling a month into the past involves sitting in a box for a month. This method would probably be best for short trips, and even then isn’t useful for much beyond sports betting and day trading in the stock market.

A viable time machine has its own special kind of charm

            Another method for traveling through time involves wormholes, which are always exciting. The general idea is to make a wormhole, move one end around at near the speed of light, then take advantage of the relativistic effects to time travel. To visualize this, picture two doorways that when walking through one, you instantly walk out of the other, regardless of the distance between them (feel free to add some extra sciency stuff around the doors to this picture. I recommend Tesla Coils). Now, similar to the Twin Paradox, you put one door in a spaceship and fly it around at near light speed for a while. Time at both doors is tracked, probably in a handsome LED display above the frame, and when you bring them back together they show a difference of five hours. In theory, if you where to look at one clock, step through the corresponding door, and then look at the clock of the door you just excited, you would see the same time (plus a few seconds naturally). You can’t travel to a time before the wormholes existing, so you can’t use this to blow Isaac Newton’s mind (unless you find some existing wormholes that somehow pulled this off naturally), but I still think this is stupendous. A potential problem with this is that you could create infinite feedback loops, which are generally bad. An example would be if you had wormholes one minute separate in time and facing each other at a distance of one light minute. If you were to shine a light from the older door into the younger it would emerge at the same time and place it originated, creating an infinite loop. Infinite energy created through this could maybe break the universe, but I’m not sure if it would be a problem. Interacting with this energy, including just observing it, would necessarily interrupt the loop at the beginning, negating the whole thing and making it of no consequence (unless it just instantaneously ends the universe, which is a lame consequence, so who cares). A cool thing that you could do similar to this would be to position the sides of a wormhole in such a way that falling through one would reposition you directly above it again (no time differences, since it would just cause problems). This would create an infinite fall, or technically, an infinite source of potential energy. You could easily run water through this, set up a turbine, and then generate electricity like mad (I wonder if this is how Aperture Science gets its power?). This isn’t creating energy or anything, since it's just using gravity, and if overused it could pull the planet out of orbit or something, but it could still be handy (I wonder if you could use this to propel a planet on purpose by basically pulling it with its own gravity?). Wormholes are just so spectacular that it is hard to think of anything that couldn’t be accomplished with the ample use of them.

This is what I imagine an infinite fall wormhole arrangement looking like

            A third way to travel back in time is based on some physicists having some fun with math. If you create crazy enough spacetime geometry you can plot a trajectory through it that would result in exiting before you enter. I don’t know the specifics, but I assume it involves concepts like negative mass or white holes, whose existence is dubious. If they do exist, this seems like the only scientifically legitimate way for someone to travel back in time if a manufactured device hasn’t already been created. A greatly simplified version of this is commonly used in the Star Trek universe, so I’m willing to call this version James T. Kirk approved (you can also create warp drives using this same kind of spacetime geometry witchcraft). If you want to write a scientifically accurate story that involves time travel motivated by revenge or fixing the wrongs of the past, then this method would probably be the best. In the theme of scientific accuracy you would need to account for the fact that such exotic spacetime geometries would only exist a large distance from Earth, so you would need to travel out to it and then back. This would take a while so you better account for that with some extra time traveling, while also employing cryogenic stasis or something similar during the commute. Finding these spacetime phenomena would also be difficult, since if you observed it from a distance it might not still exist when you arrive at its location. Also, surviving travel through this space would be difficult do to insane tidal forces and the like. Hmm, maybe you shouldn’t write a scientifically accurate time travel story. Probably the most interesting thing here is that physicists are spending time thinking about how to make time machines, which makes me very happy.

Looks simple enough to me

            I’ve come to a conclusion. The best method for traveling back in time would be for aliens to show up and give you access to a bunch of time machines that they have spaced throughout the past, preferably using wormholes. I think I’ll just wait for the wormholes, because they’ll make a when no different than a where, and that’s a concept so excellent that I can barely handle it. 

Infinity, Alternate Universes, and Hermaphrodites

                Infinity is an interesting concept. A seven year old will tell you that infinity is the biggest number that there is, but that isn’t really correct. Infinity is a lack of boundaries or limits. Since a number needs to have a value, infinity is something else. It is something abstract, like the idea of forever, which can never really be pinned down. Infinity is a lot more useful than forever though. For one, it is a good way to tell when math, especially physics, breaks. Infinity is the solution to dividing by zero, and it often makes an appearance if you try to theorize a massive object travelling at the speed of light. Infinite series and asymptotes are also cool.

                Infinite divisibility is probably my favorite aspect of infinity. Basically, it is the idea that you can continuously divide something up into smaller pieces, forever, without getting pieces of zero size. Then understand that this same process can be done with every piece. It is what the Dewey Decimal System is based on. Now, there are a couple ways to infinitely divide something. You could create and infinite different values that exist between one and two, and when summed, these values would create infinity. You could also divide one by half an infinite number of times, and these values would sum to two. Understanding the difference between these cases is the key to realizing that Zeno’s Paradox is nonsense (also, trying to separate time from space is like trying to remove the direction left, friggin’ crappy paradoxes).

                More mind blowing that any lame Greek paradox is the concept of infinite alternate universes. This is the idea that every single event that has ever occurred could have happened differently, and a universe exists for each of those possibilities. Even more mind blowing, due to the crazy coolness of infinite divisibility, an infinite number of universes exist for each possibility. This means that every universe that you could imagine would exist. Assuming that this idea is true; there is a universe where you wore a green shirt today, a universe where you were born as the opposite gender, one where you and I having sex right now, one where we are having sex and will live forever, and one we are doing it / living forever / being true hermaphrodites capable of self-fertilization who start the new super race of Homo Superior (because if you can impregnate, get pregnant, or get yourself pregnant, you are basically the Ubermensch). Guess what, there is an infinite number of universes where that happens.